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Nor can we, on the other hand, think that matter is simply
Absolute Magnitude.
Magnitude is not, like Matter, a receptacle; it is an
Ideal-Principle: it is a thing standing apart to itself, not some
definite Mass. The fact is that the self-gathered content of the
Intellectual Principle or of the All-Soul, desires expansion [and
thereby engenders secondaries]: in its images- aspiring and
moving towards it and eagerly imitating its act- is vested a
similar power of reproducing their states in their own
derivatives. The Magnitude latent in the expansive tendency of
the Image-making phase [of Intellect or All-Soul] runs forth into
the Absolute Magnitude of the Universe; this in turn enlists into
the process the spurious magnitude of Matter: the content of the
Supreme, thus, in virtue of its own prior extension enables
Matter- which never possesses a content- to exhibit the
appearance of Magnitude. It must be understood that spurious
Magnitude consists in the fact that a thing [Matter] not
possessing actual Magnitude strains towards it and has the
extension of that straining. All that is Real Being gives forth a
reflection of itself upon all else; every Reality, therefore, has
Magnitude which by this process is communicated to the Universe.
The Magnitude inherent in each Ideal-Principle- that of a horse
or of anything else- combines with Magnitude the Absolute with
the result that, irradiated by that Absolute, Matter entire takes
Magnitude and every particle of it becomes a mass; in this way,
by virtue at once of the totality of Idea with its inherent
magnitude and of each several specific Idea, all things appear
under mass; Matter takes on what we conceive as extension; it is
compelled to assume a relation to the All and, gathered under
this Idea and under Mass, to be all things- in the degree in
which the operating power can lead the really nothing to become
all.
By the conditions of Manifestation, colour rises from non-colour
[= from the colourless prototype of colour in the Ideal Realm].
Quality, known by the one name with its parallel in the sphere of
Primals, rises, similarly, from non-quality: in precisely the
same mode, the Magnitude appearing upon Matter rises from
non-Magnitude or from that Primal which is known to us by the
same name; so that material things become visible through
standing midway between bare underlie and Pure Idea. All is
perceptible by virtue of this origin in the Intellectual Sphere
but all is falsity since the base in which the manifestation
takes place is a non-existent.
Particular entities thus attain their Magnitude through being
drawn out by the power of the Existents which mirror themselves
and make space for themselves in them. And no violence is
required to draw them into all the diversity of Shapes and Kinds
because the phenomenal All exists by Matter [by Matter's
essential all-receptivity] and because each several Idea,
moreover, draws Matter its own way by the power stored within
itself, the power it holds from the Intellectual Realm. Matter is
manifested in this sphere as Mass by the fact that it mirrors the
Absolute Magnitude; Magnitude here is the reflection in the
mirror. The Ideas meet all of necessity in Matter [the Ultimate
of the emanatory progress]: and Matter, both as one total thing
and in its entire scope, must submit itself, since it is the
Material of the entire Here, not of any one determined thing:
what is, in its own character, no determined thing may become
determined by an outside force- though, in becoming thus
determined, it does not become the definite thing in question,
for thus it would lose its own characteristic indetermination.
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